"You're a good mummy,"
he told me
"you give me food
every night."

I thanked him,
told him how happy
his words made me,
but I began to cry.

Images of mothers,
some place else,
somewhere I am not,
flooded me.

Images of mothers
whose children
cry out in hunger.

Images of mothers
who hold their children close
because they have
nothing else to give.

I don't know how it feels
to tell a child
they cannot eat
for a third day
in a row.

I don't know how it feels
to watch as your child's ribcage
becomes more defined.

I don't know how it feels
to be truly helpless.

I cry,
for the image of mothers
whose tears remain unheard.

That maybe someone
might hear me
and ask why.

I buried
my roots
in new-age
spirituality.

It nourished me
with words
like water,
soil
sunshine
and promised
a harvest.

They say
the hand
that points
to the moon,
is not
the moon
and I was thirsty.

My entitlement
told me
I should not
be humbled
by a glass
of water
when what
I desire
is a
spring.

Well the spring
never came
and my
cup became
just another
empty glass.

Now I've
stepped off
my hedonic
treadmill.

My frail
body was
not designed
to withstand
the aches
of running.

I'm a
tall woman,
albeit small.

I was built
to see
the little things
from great heights.

And so it became
my glass of water
turned to wine.

We threw a mattress
in the back of my car.
Some clothes.
Some food.

I packed eight books.
He packed a skateboard.

We drove along
the freeway
behind a car
the same as my mother's.

I thought about when she left
and all the tears I know she cried
driving away,
northward bound.

She drove for five days.
That's a lot of tears
and math
I can't do.

The driver had the same tanned skin
my mother has now,
and sun-bleached caramel hair
I imagine she would have too
had she not preferred
the taste of licorice.

I've been reading
the subtle art
of not giving a ****
and too many a-*****
I've given
about her leaving.

Let me record
the last **** given
in poetry
and move on.

So my love and I
drove on,
together.

We're best together.

My father always told my sister and I
not to bite the hand that feeds.
But I look down at my hands
and see scars where my own teeth
have drawn blood.

hap*
/hap/

noun
1. luck; fortune

verb
1. come about by chance

And it hit me,
by happenstance,
that perhaps,
per-chance
I'd been
wrong.

Wrong in believing
a happiness
was owed
to people
and would
flow to me
not by happenstance
but by choice.

By choice
and by choosing
the right path.
But the path
of choice
and of choosing
the one
that is right
is a very wrong
and anxious
path
indeed.

And indeed
I am
the anxious type
from years
of fears
that by
trusting choice
over happenstance
I'd choose
wrong.

But I didn't
choose wrong.
Nor did I
choose right.
I chose
not to choose
at all.

I'm also
the sad type.
And now
I worry
that by
definition of
hap
and thus
of happiness
I'm not sad
by happenstance
but of
choice.

I envy her.
I'd write that
she changes lovers
as often as her clothes,
but I've seen her
hold on to clothes
much longer.

I envy her.
She knows love
straight out of
a Vogue editorial.
The kind where models
wear only jeans
and ****** each other
with their polished,
photoshopped beauty
and ****** eyes.

Then you see
the same models
somewhere else,
seducing some other model,
and wonder
how their brains
can keep up
the oxytocin
demand.

I envy her.

My lover and I,
we're full of holes,
like my father's
light blue Levi's
from the eighties.

I don't envy her.
We're full of holes,
my love and I,
but full of patches
because a good pair of jeans
are worth mending
when they fit you
like a glove.

We sat
on the edge
of the kitchen bench,
like most evenings
and shared stories
from our days.

My love,
his eyes
a mirror
for his weary mind.

It's only Monday
he says
watching
Kenny dance
inside a glass.

**** Kenny.
He's no good.

Why are you so sad?
he asks.
I smile and say
because I'm me!
and throw my arms to the sky
like my own personal curtain call.

He sips from his glass,
no longer dancing
and replies
that's a much simpler answer.

I leap from the bench
and embrace him,
cradle his head
to my cold
and bony
shoulder.